The council is conducting farm-by-farm inspections in the Castletown-Kinneigh and Coppeen area. Farmers who are well familiar with Department of agriculture, Bord Bia and a myriad of different inspections are finding these county council inspections are far more intense and are being conducted on every farm, even though the expectation was only 5% would be inspected. Even a one-cow farm is being inspected. The inspections are being driven by water quality. Where pollution and noncompliance are identified, there are penalties and immediate action is expected to be taken. It is reasonable enough that immediate action would be taken if there is pollution, but further along the very same riverbank, Dunmanway wastewater treatment plant is polluting the same water body. "Prime Time" conducted a programme on this recently and it is very frustrating for farmers who find they are not being treated equally. Why are all farms in the area being inspected one after the other and are all polluters, including Irish Water, going to be expected to take immediate action and upgrade?

There is a water action plan, which I launched a number of months ago, and it is anticipated there will be more inspections as well as funding to increase the number of inspectors at local authority level. This is about retention of the nitrates derogation. It is critically important to this country and we all can agree on that here. It is also about improving our water quality and we have a significant challenge. The farmers out there might note there is Waters of LIFE, which is a really good European innovation partnership we want farmers to participate in. I am not sure about the inspection of very small holdings, but that is something we can look into. I again encourage farmers to be involved in schemes that are out there to improve water quality. We all want to achieve good water quality and certainly it is in all our interest and the interest of farmers to retain the nitrates derogation.